Sermon Tone Analysis
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When I was a child I had the good fortune to travel all over the United States.
We moved a lot when I was a kid, so that helped, but we also traveled a lot.
My dad would take me to conferences he attended, so by the time I was an adult I had visited all but four of the fifty states.
I was always fascinated with that moment when we’d drive out of one state and into another.
There’s always a sign which says, “Welcome to” whatever state you happen to be entering.
I’d always hold my breath when we crossed borders because I knew that, for a split second, I was halfway in one state and halfway in another.
Then when I was nine I saw something that took that feeling to a whole new level.
When I was about twelve my family took a vacation to Idaho
We were moving from Oklahoma (in the south) to Washington State (in the northwest), and we drove the whole way there, through some of the most beautiful country I’d ever seen.
My mother was very pregnant with my youngest brother, so we took it slow.
We drove through Death Valley, visited the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone National Park.
But my favorite of the sites we visited was the Four Corners Monument.
It’s just a big plaque on the ground with two intersecting lines making a cross.
But this monument actually stands at the corner of four states—Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah.
And the fun tourist game to play is to walk on to the monument and sprawl out the best you can over the intersecting lines, in order to be, for that brief time, in four states at once.
We humans can’t be present everywhere, but at least for that brief time we can be present in several places.
We are in the third week of our annual series entitled simply, “God Is...”, in which we look at some of the attributes of God.
And in case you haven’t guessed it yet, today we’ll be looking at the fact that our God is omnipresent—meaning, he is present everywhere.
There are several places we could go to in Scripture to see this reality, but my favorite is .
God Is Omnipresent
Then when I was twenty-three, I moved to Europe with my new wife (we’d been married a year).
And
A lot of people understand as being about us.
We use this psalm to talk about the dignity of human life, about the injustice of murder and abortion, and that’s all valid.
But that’s not really what this psalm is about.
This psalm has much more to say about God than it does about us.
Or to put it another way, this psalm is mainly about God’s transcendence: it says that God is immeasurably huge, standing outside of his creation; and that we, creatures in his creation, are immeasurably small in comparison.
And David explains God’s transcendence primarily by speaking about his omnipresence.
Let’s start at v. 1:
Psalm 139.1-12:
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1 O Lord, you have searched me and known me!
2 You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from afar.
3 You search out my path and my lying down
and are acquainted with all my ways.
4 Even before a word is on my tongue,
behold, O Lord, you know it altogether.
5 You hem me in, behind and before,
and lay your hand upon me.
6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
it is high; I cannot attain it.
Depending on who you are, these verses will either be comforting or unsettling.
Some of us like the idea that God sees everything we do, that he knows us this perfectly, that he sees all of our acts and knows all of our thoughts.
Others think more unsettling thoughts of God sitting in a big office in the sky with a zillion TV monitors in front of him, watching his creation on closed-circuit security cameras.
God knows everything David does, every word he says—even every thought.
How can he know all this?
But that is not how God knows all that he knows about the actions of human beings.
He doesn’t just see everything from afar.
He sees everything we do because he is with us when we do it.
Which is exactly what David says next.
7 Where shall I go from your Spirit?
Or where shall I flee from your presence?
8 If I ascend to heaven, you are there!
If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!
9 If I take the wings of the morning
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
10 even there your hand shall lead me,
and your right hand shall hold me.
11 If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,
and the light about me be night,”
12 even the darkness is not dark to you;
the night is bright as the day,
for darkness is as light with you.
Anon, 2016.
The Holy Bible: English Standard Version, Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles.
God is transcendent.
He is not a part of the creation, so he is not bound by the creation.
He’s not a physical being like us.
He doesn’t have a body.
Jesus says that “God is spirit” (), so he is not limited to a physical place and time.
He is always present, everywhere.
Now of course our minds boggle at this idea; we wonder how this could be.
The Bible’s first answer is that God isn’t a physical being like us.
He doesn’t have a body.
Jesus says that “God is spirit” (), so he is not limited to a physical place and time.
But he is not a spirit like other spirits; he is the Creator of all things, including other spirits.
Which means that he is totally apart from and above creation.
And the simple answer is what we said before: God is transcendent.
A lot us will imagine that God’s transcendence would bring God far away from us.
He is not a part of his creation, but outside of it.
And in a sense that is true.
But Scripture also affirms that God is not far from his creation, that he does not separate himself from it, but rather that because he is transcendent, God fills all things.
Paul says in :
[There is] one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.
Jeremiah says in :
“Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, 28 for ‘In him we live and move and have our being’...”
“ ‘In him we live and move and have our being’...”
Anon, 2016.
The Holy Bible: English Standard Version, Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles.
GOD IS OMNIPRESENT.
How?
How?
He is Spirit ().
:
23 “Am I a God at hand, declares the Lord, and not a God far away?
24 Can a man hide himself in secret places so that I cannot see him?
declares the Lord.
Do I not fill heaven and earth?
declares the Lord.
The theological word for this is immanence.
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